Director Robert Eggers’ re-imagining of F.W. Murnau’s 1922 silent classic “Nosferatu,” which itself was a thinly disguised ripoff of Bram Stoker’s “Dracula,” sneaked into theaters Christmas Day, just in the nick of time to give all the Goth kids nighttime refuge from all the family holiday parties, to sink their teeth into some counter-programming. For the record, this “Nosferatu” sneaks in a period-decorated Christmas tree, so if “Die Hard can be considered a Christmas movie by gum, so can Robert Eggers’” Nosferatu.”
For the unfamiliar, Robert Eggers’ previous three films, “The Witch,” “The Lighthouse,” and “The Northman,” are all expertly crafted period pieces, where the filmmaking process, costumes, lighting, sets, and sound are all as, or more, integral to the finished process than the acting or script. Call him Kubrickian in his precision, but if Robert Eggers’ movies are a boon for atmosphere, sumptuous details, and unequaled cinematography, they will likely give audiences a slight chill. You don’t go into a Robert Eggers’ joint expecting the warm and fuzzies, and you won’t find much to laugh about in his adaptation of Count Orlok, the Transylvanian spiritual cousin to Dracula. Eggers plays it straight and maybe too straight. He nails the 1830s Germanic Expressionism down to a tee, and you’ll be flabbergasted watching this film unfold. In a landscape of oversaturated CGI movies, you will gaze up at the screen in wonder as to exactly how Eggers and his team pull off a film that looks so real; it’s as if the entire crew were thrown into a time machine with their equipment and dropped off in the 19th Century.
At times, Eggers channels some of the greats, from Carl Dreyer to Andrei Tarkovsky, with his precise camera movements and evocative lighting. The film feels more Eastern European than American cinema. The absolutely stunning lighting and camerawork from Eggers’ go-to cinematographer, Jarin Blaschke, is worth the price of admission alone, even if the action on screen may shift more to the dull side of things for mainstream audiences.
And that is the area where “Nosferatu” runs into trouble. Unless you’ve never seen a vampire or “Dracula” film before, the story is pretty much a detailed, play-by-play re-enactment of that time-worn tale. So, if you’ve read the book or seen any previous versions, you know what’s coming, when it’s coming, and who the players are. It makes one wonder why Eggers felt compelled to tell another version, although in Eggers’ hands, he makes you believe he could turn any movie into something interesting to watch, and this film is always watchable. The problem is that most of the main characters are pretty dull.
Yes, I get it: no one cares a lot about most of the characters in these “Dracula” movies anyway because it’s all about the Count. And here, Eggers doesn’t disappoint. His Count Orlok, played under ghoulish makeup by a completely unrecognizable Bill Skarsgård (Pennywise from “It”), is creepy, scary, and different from almost every other incarnation we’ve gotten out of a screen vampire. Otherwise, Mina and Johnathan Harker from the “Dracula” version have been replaced with Ellen and Thomas Hutter. And these two are a couple of Masterpiece Theater dullards. What attraction led these two newlyweds to marry in the first place? Nicholas Hoult as Thomas and Lily-Rose Depp do fine jobs acting-wise, but they are a couple of wet blankets whose besties, Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s Freidrich Harding and his wife, Emma Corrin’s Anna Harding, are equally dull and un-engaging. For all its 2-hour, 20-minute runtime, Eggers would have done himself a service to set up the love story between Depp and Thomas a bit so we, the audience, could be better vested in the battle of wills against Count Orlok.
Depp, who redeems herself slightly from her career cliff-diving decision to be in HBO/MAX’s “The Idol,” still can’t shake the stink of that limited series misfire, and it is a distraction. When you see those Johnny Depp eyes staring out at you for much of the film’s runtime, you are in constant reminder that you are watching Depp’s daughter who is writhing around, screaming from waking nightmares and convulsing through this vampire horror-fest.
The only one, other than Bill Skarsgård, who seems to have understood the assignment that, for all its seriousness, the film at its core wants to be a campy 1960s Hammer film, is Willem Dafoe. Dafoe, of course, plays the movie’s Van Helsing equivalent, Albin Eberhart Von Fran, who straddles the line between seriousness and camp far better than Anthony Hopkins did in Coppola’s “Dracula.” This film marks Dafoe’s third go-around with Eggers, and he is well suited to the role. Again, like most of the characters in this version, he is going through the motions of the standard “Dracula” plot, and the movie’s true star is the film’s look.
To his credit, Eggers does find success in various areas within the film. Hoult’s, as Thomas Hutter’s, journey to meet with Count Orlok takes up a fair amount of screen time, and Eggers uses this time to build up suspense. When we, the audience, finally glimpse Orlok’s castle, the reveal is satisfying and earned. Count Orlok’s arrival in Germany via boat is another great standout sequence, as is the plague of rats Orlok brings with him. Most films will give you a sequence or two of rats to illustrate that this fictional German town has a “rat problem.” Not Eggers. During the film’s final act, he makes us feel like the plague has come for real. There are so many rats crawling around the streets that one could be excused for checking their feet during the movie to ensure a scurry of furry friends hadn’t been released into the theatre for effect.
In my final summation, “Nosferatu” is worth it for fans of the genre and those who love watching high-craft filmmaking and movies shot on 35mm instead of digital. The textures and softness of the light in this movie are only achievable when shot on film stock. I loved this film for its look, and less so for the movie it gave me. But I also caught another film that’s playing on Netflix over the holidays called “Carry-on.” And that film was so bad that I’d take a stodgy Robert Eggers film over a dozen “Carry-ons” any day of the week.
James Kent is the publisher’s assistant at the Mountain Times, and host of the “Stuff We’ve Seen” podcast at stuffweveseen.com.
